Humanity has always had power needs, and power for industrial work and home use rapidly expanded during the Industrial Revolution. At the time, steam power and electricity became serious power sources for the first time, and often replaced animal or human labor across Europe and North America. As the 20th century progressed, electricity became a standard across most parts of the world, and large fossil fuel power plants and nuclear power plants appeared everywhere from the United States and Canada to Germany, Russia, and Japan. And now, in the 21st century, people are looking to even newer and more efficient power sources. What is more, clean energy is becoming highly sought after, and the “go green” initiative calls for phasing out dirty fossil fuel power. Solar energy system installation can be done when professionals install solar panels on roofs, and many solar companies are hard at work doing just that. Solar energy system installation can lead to an entire array being built, and solar energy system installation is becoming more affordable and widespread than ever. What is there to know about solar power today? Is solar energy system installation worth it?
On Solar and Energy
Clean energy is often on people’s minds today, and entire cities or nations have announced intentions for more solar energy system installation and wind farms to replace fossil fuels. Many European nations from Ireland to Germany are launching massive projects to derive most or even all of their energy from clean sources such as solar. And while the United States currently does not have a major federal program for this, states and cities do. Many American states and cities, from California to Louisiana, are installing more solar panels than ever before. State governors and city mayors are announcing their own energy goals that involve solar and wind power, and deadlines are sometimes being set for this. Many cities or states plan to derive a certain percentage of their power from clean sources by certain years in the future. Some goals are as far off as 2030 or 2050, while others may be set much sooner.
Why solar? While fossil fuels provide for a majority of American power, fossil fuels are finite, while the sun is not. Solar panel technology takes advantage of the sun’s enormous power output, and this is an inexhaustible resource. In fact, every single day, some 120,000 terawatts of solar energy strike the Earth, and this is 10,000 times more power than flows through the entire world’s industrial civilization at a time. This means that, for now at least, solar power is effectively indefinite and impossible to exhaust, and it is clear that the entire world’s energy needs could be met with solar energy. Those needs may even be met many times over if enough solar panels are in place, even accounting for the rapidly rising energy needs around the world.
Install Those Panels
Solar panels are appearing in developed and developing parts of the world alike. For example, many regions in Africa are getting electricity for the first time, and typically, this is solar power. This is fortunate timing, many would argue, since many African communities are never seeing pollution-heavy power plants built. Instead, solar panels are being set up, and many regions of Africa, as in other parts of the world, are arid and have very little cloud cover. This makes for ideal conditions for solar panels, which can absorb power on an industrial scale in large arrays. In this way, developing parts of the world join the world’s power community without any pollution.
Elsewhere, fossil fuel plants are often being shut down as solar and wind power take over their duties. Some European nations even plan to shut down every single fossil fuel plant they have by certain deadlines, since solar panels have become efficient enough and cheap enough to make this possible. For example, sunny regions of the United States are a fine place for arrays of hundreds or even thousands of solar panels, and these arrays can power entire neighborhoods or city blocks at a time. Private homeowners can also have their own solar panels installed on the roof, which can power the home and even send leftover power to the nearby power plant.